|
ABOUT US
KAHEA is a network of activists throughout the five main Hawaiian Islands. We address critical issues within our communities and 'ahupua'a (geographic and cultural demarcation from the uppermost land to the outer reef).
We work with citizens organizing to protect sensitive shorelines and culturally significant sites from inappropriate development and to prevent the conversion of our agricultural lands to gated communities, golf courses, and malls. We also work to protect Hawai‘i's threatened biodiversity and endangered species.
One of KAHEA's objectives is to convene key activists, kupuna (elders), practitioners and resource experts. Together they develop coordinated strategies, share expertise, build networks and focus campaigns in order to become more effective in protecting Hawai'i's fragile environment, resources and people.
We strive to encourage citizen participation through outreach and education. By joining forces, Native Hawaiians, environmentalist activists and the concerned public can have a much greater impact on issues that affect us all.
Read our Organizational Report: KAHEA: The First Five Years (1.2 MB)
Our Mission Statement
KAHEA is a community-based organization working to improve the quality of life for Hawai‘i's people and future generations through the revitalization and protection of Hawai‘i's unique natural and cultural resources. We advocate for the proper stewardship of our resources and for social responsibility by promoting multi-cultural understanding and environmental justice.
Kahea translates as "the call."
- We focus on issues that impact cultural rights and the 'aina (land).
- We are cultural activists and practitioners, including kuma hula (teachers of dance, language, chants, history, and healing), environmental activists and people concerned about social justice.
- We are on every island.
- We are 'opio (youth), makua (adults) and kupuna (elders).
Board of Directors
Staff
Miwa Tamanaha, Executive Director
miwa(at)kahea.org
 Miwa joined KAHEA as Executive Director in October 2007. She brings to KAHEA a strong background in social science and policy, a passion for natural and cultural conservation in the Pacific and in Hawai’i, and good old-fashioned Okinawan get-up-and-go.
Miwa holds a joint-B.A./M.A. in Economics from the University of Southern California, with studies at Boston University’s Center for Coastal Studies. As an undergraduate Sustainable Cities Fellow at USC, Miwa assisted a multi-agency, long term study of the cost of beach closures due to storm water pollution, and later conducted graduate research on the economic costs of residential overbuilding.
Miwa has also conducted research on the economic cost of closed seasons in a small-scale Mexican blue crab fishery, and served as technical advisor to a Conservation Strategy Fund study on demand for national park visitation for the Tanzania Park Service (TANAPA).
After graduating, Miwa oversaw the Southern California Boater Education Campaign, an award-winning pollution prevention campaign aimed at reducing non-point source pollution from marina and boating activities. As program manager with Natural Equity, Miwa helped develop the stakeholder input processes for the social science monitoring programs in the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. She is co-author of a report on non-consumptive uses of the Central Coast for the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (MLPAi). She served as a founding member of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation’s pelagic plastic taskforce, and has worked personally as an advocate for urban organic gardens, parks, and open space.
Most recently, Miwa served as Communications and Policy Director for Santa Monica Bay’s National Estuary Program (the Bay Restoration Commission), where she helped lead the Commission’s initiatives on invasive species prevention, edited the Commission’s Journal of Bay Restoration, and led an effort to incorporate environmental justice criteria into Commission Proposition 84 bond funding priorities. Miwa also oversaw development of stakeholder involvement processes for the Commission's 2007 Comprehensive Coastal Management Plan update.
Miwa escapes the office occasionally, and sees sunshine while surfing, rock climbing, and diving (but not all at the same time). She enjoys receiving newspaper clippings from her mother (e.g., “shark eats surfer!”) highlighting the dangers of these activities.
Marti Townsend, Program Director
marti(at)kahea.org
 Raised on the red dirt of Leeward O‘ahu, Marti is a long-time champion of causes for the ‘aina. Today, Marti is KAHEA’s primary advocate for the strongest possible protections in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands project, proper stewardship for the sacred summit of Mauna Kea and the new Environmental Justice Program.
Captain of the debate team in high school – Go “Mighty Menes”! – everybody always said she’d be a lawyer someday. Despite her every effort to prove them wrong, including a year backpacking through Europe, Marti graduated from the award-winning UH Environmental Law Program in 2005. Marti represented Hawai‘i at the world-renown Pace University Environmental Law Moot Court Competition, where she was twice awarded “Best Oralist.”
While clerking at the Honolulu Office of Earthjustice, Marti helped research and draft the original pleadings against the U.S. Army for failing to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act to assess the impacts of the greatest military expansion in Hawai‘i since World War II. This case was successfully appealed to the 9th Circuit, requiring the Army to re-draft its environmental impact statement. She also helped draft the original submittal to the Water Commission on the wasting of water in the Na Wai ‘Eha watershed on Maui. This case is currently in litigation.
Marti served two sessions as staff to the State House Finance Committee, and is oddly nostalgic for the inhumanly long hours spent in a windowless office crunching budget data.
Marti is mother to a perspicacious one-year-old, wife to an espresso connoisseur, and haumana to Kumu Hula Malia Bird-Helela. To keep life exciting, she purchased a 1984 biodiesel stationwagon that agrees to function only 65% of the time.
La‘akea La‘ano, Outreach Coordinator
laakea(at)kahea.org
 La‘akea brings to KAHEA both her experience in education and event planning, and a strong commitment to Hawaiian language and cultural practice. She currently oversees outreach and educational programs at KAHEA. La’akea holds a B.A. in Economics from Middlebury College and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of Vermont.
Prior to and during graduate studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz, she conducted research in marine invertebrate ecology and marine mammal physiology through National Science Foundation fellowships.
Before joining KAHEA, La'akea worked as both a teacher and event coordinator. She served as a member of the planning committee that founded the Halau Ku Mana Public Charter School in 2000, and later as a teacher of math and Hawaiian language there. She was the event coordinator for the Hawai'i Healing Garden Ethnobotanical Festival at Waimea Valley, and is on the ‘Awa Development Council, which sponsors the annual Kava Festival.
She is currently working on her Master's degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine, at the Institute of Clinical Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine in Honolulu, where she works in the student clinic every Wednesday.
La‘akea shares her home with two dogs and a bunny named Niu, who all consider themselves lucky to have La‘akea as their pet.
|
